Related papers: A Hermite-Gaussian Based Radial Velocity Estimatio…
Radial velocity surveys are beginning to reach the time baselines required to detect Jupiter analogs, as well as sub-Saturn mass planets in close orbits. Therefore it is important to understand the sensitivity of these surveys at long…
Stellar activity remains a limiting factor in measuring precise planet parameters from radial velocity spectroscopy, not least in the search for Earth mass planets orbiting in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars. One approach to mitigate…
With the advent of optical interferometers that will be coming online in the next decade, radial velocity searches for extra-solar planets will be complemented by high angular resolution astrometric measurements. In this paper, we explore…
Many of the planets discovered via the radial velocity technique are hot Jupiters in 3-5 day orbits with ~10$% chance of transiting their parent star. However, radial velocity surveys for extra-solar planets generally require substantial…
This work is part of an ongoing project which aims to detect terrestrial planets in our neighbouring star system $\alpha$ Centauri using the Doppler method. Owing to the small angular separation between the two components of the $\alpha$…
The canonical methods for gravitational wave detection are ground- and space-based laser interferometry, pulsar timing, and polarization of the cosmic microwave background. But as has been suggested by numerous investigators, astrometry…
Doppler planet searches are complicated by stellar activity, through which cyclical changes in the host star's photosphere and chromosphere can mask or mimic planetary signals. A popular technique for modeling stellar activity is to apply a…
The next generation of exoplanet-hunting spectrographs should deliver up to an order of magnitude improvement in radial velocity precision over the standard 1 m/s state of the art. This advance is critical for enabling the detection of…
We present a new technique for detecting scattered starlight from transiting, close-orbiting extrasolar giant planets (CEGPs) that has the virtues of simplicity, robustness, linearity, and model-independence. Given a series of stellar…
Radial velocity (RV) is crucial for stellar kinematics and Galactic archaeology. The Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) has obtained over ten million low-resolution spectra ($R \sim 1800$), yielding RVs for…
At optical wavelengths, an exoplanet's signature is essentially reflected light from the host star - several orders of magnitude fainter. Since it is superimposed on the star spectrum its detection has been a difficult observational…
Some pulsating stars are good clocks. When they are found in binary stars, the frequencies of their luminosity variations are modulated by the Doppler effect caused by orbital motion. For each pulsation frequency this manifests itself as a…
While stellar rotation periods $P_\mathrm{rot}$ may be measured from broadband photometry, the photometric modulation becomes harder to detect for slower rotators, which could bias measurements of the long-period tail of the…
Precision radial velocity (RV) measurements continue to be a key tool to detect and characterise extrasolar planets. While instrumental precision keeps improving, stellar activity remains a barrier to obtain reliable measurements below 1-2…
The gravitational microlensing technique allows the discovery of exoplanets around stars distributed in the disk of the galaxy towards the bulge. However, the alignment of two stars that led to the discovery is unique over the timescale of…
The sensitivity of radial velocity (RV) surveys for exoplanet detection are extending to increasingly long orbital periods, where companions with periods of several years are now being regularly discovered. Companions with orbital periods…
We present a three-dimensional reconstruction of the velocity distribution of nearby stars (<~ 100 pc) using a maximum likelihood density estimation technique applied to the two-dimensional tangential velocities of stars. The underlying…
We cross-match the GALEX and Kepler surveys to create a unique dataset with both ultraviolet (UV) measurements and highly precise photometric variability measurements in the visible light spectrum. As stellar activity is driven by magnetic…
This chapter reviews various methods of detecting planetary companions to stars from an observational perspective, focusing on radial velocities, astrometry, direct imaging, transits, and gravitational microlensing. For each method, this…
With about 700 confirmed extrasolar planets, it is time to move beyond discovery and towards characterization. Perhaps the most basic parameter of an extrasolar planet is its mass; however, this is very difficult to determine if the planet…